I passed my shodan (first-degree black belt) test in aikido yesterday, after about 15 years of practice! I'm still in Montreal for day 2 of the seminar where the tests are held, feeling a bit stiff and sore from the 5 hours of practice yesterday; it'll ease up once I get back on the mats and moving, and I have tomorrow to recover.

Off to aikido summer camp... see y'all in a week!

My ikkyu (what would be brown belt in most arts that use colors for ranks) test in aikido is scheduled... Wednesday the 28th. This is the last one I'll do here; black belt tests are done out of town, at seminars.

It has been a long time coming, in large part because I've put it off.

It's simultaneously flattering and humbling to have so many folks at the dojo willing, nay eager, to help me with preparations for my first kyu test, which I expect to take sometime around March.

I must really like aikido.

I got up at 05:00, and left Ottawa shortly after 6 with a friend to head to Montreal for a seminar. It took just under 2 hours to get there, but then about 45 minutes to find a parking and walk to the seminar, which had changed location slightly from previous years. Register, change, and get on the mats for 9, and then the fun began.

We had an hour with each of three Shihan: Yamada Sensei from New York, Bernath Sensei from Florida, and Fukakusa Sensei from Thailand. I got to practice with new folks from all over the Northeast of the continent, including the renowned Robert Zimmerman Sensei from Toronto, whose style is reputed to be extraordinarily hard. I found him forceful, but not excessively so; of course, he may well have been going easy on me as a white belt he hadn't met before. By the end of the morning, I was pretty tired, and looking forward to lunch!

After showering and getting back into street clothes, we strolled down to a nearby mall, where I ate about half of an immense serving of pretty good pad thai, then went back via the car to get my other backpack with a fresh gi etc. for the afternoon.

In the afternoon, we had another hour with each of Fukakusa and Yamada; by the end of the second hour, I was having a hard time getting up, and my thigh muscles were starting to spasm, which is new! After that, I handled a camera for filming our dan-rank tests. The tests ran for a bit over an hour, and then we were done for the evening.

Showered and changed again, the crowd from our dojo, about twenty of us, went off to a nearby Indian restaurant, where I got into a Taj Mahal draft beer (an ale which goes quite well with the Indian spices), some onion bahji, and a very tasty balti goat curry. The mood was quite celebratory, as we had all our candidates pass: 2 new shodan (first-degree black belt) and 3 new sandan (third-degree black belt, the highest rank generally given by examination).

After dinner, a few of us went off in search of dessert, and found a little place nearby with a convenient cluster of couches, so we hung out for a while there, taking the rare opportunity to socialize and hang out. After classes back home, there's always a reason to rush off, so we don't get to relax together as much as we'd sometimes wish.

Around 10:00, we figured it was time to head back to Ottawa, so we hobbled our way back to the car and drove back home. I unpacked my rather damp gis and crashed into bed somewhere around 12:30, and then slept for most of ten hours. Today will not be a very active day for me... I'm sore everywhere.

...and I like at least half of you half as well as you deserve.

I have, however, a fair number of obligations on my time these days, so if I haven't seen you in a while, it's likely not because I don't want to see you, but because I am busy. Admittedly, some of my busy is fun stuff, but it does keep me from seeing some of you. Things will be slightly less frazzled come the fall, and perhaps even less so in the winter, Insha'Allah.

So what's going on?

Aikido continues to keep me busy. I have finally started serious work on my ikkyu test in aikido, having procrastinated quite long enough thanks. The head instructor has given his blessing, and I'll do the test itself either in late September or mid-December; we'll see how he and I feel about it in a month. I'm still coordinating seminars; the next one is at the end of October. There is some uncertainty about our space, as the building may soon be bought (the deal is still conditional, afaik), so I'm hemming and hawing about setting up the seminar after that.

In other news, vacations are winding down, but next weekend, we have a little trip to Montreal planned, the RPG I play on Tuesdays is back up, and soul_diaspora's and my parents are all arriving in town just after Labour Day, so there will be lots going on for a while yet!

At aikido, I know I've asked a good question when all the black belts in earshot sit down to hear the answer.

(In this case, I asked why would one convert a technique from an ikkyo control to a yonkyo one; the answer had to do with how the attacker's elbow would naturally rise if they tried to come in under the ikkyo control, and how that led naturally into the yonkyo.)

It was a small group at aikido today: just 5 of us.

5-dan: qty 1 (Sensei D.)
4-dan: qty 2 (Senseis W. and L.)
1-kyu: qty 1 (M.L.)
2-kyu: qty 1 (me)

It's a great way to learn, but good heavens, the energy was intense. I don't often get to be the kohai for the class these days. Also, I haven't been that winded in quite a while!

I think I'm going to take a sabbatical from aikido this December. Not that I don't enjoy it, but I want to give myself a bit of time to think and do a few other things for a while. The New Year's Day traditional practice of 108 repetitions of a technique (based on Buddhist practice) will also make a perfect time to go back to it, fresh and hopefully unencumbered.

This also means that I'll have more time to get together with people, so if you're interested in doing something together, drop me a note!

Well, that's interesting: I just taught my second aikido class in as many weeks, this one a weapons class with three other students. (The previous one was a basics class with only one other student, during which we worked on techniques for his upcoming grading. Before that, I'd taught once, about two years ago, with four students.) I taught a few staff disarms (jo-tori) and throws (jo-nage); it seemed to go over well enough.

I'm still processing the experience of teaching in this context. Overall, I think it's a good thing; I'm just trying to understand the effect it's having on me and on my practice.